A Happy Home

Source

I was reading a blog the other day and the author mentioned a booklet by J.R. Miller called Secrets of Happy Home Life. Since I'm always aiming to have a happy home life I decided to check it out. I thought it was pretty good, but I don't remember everything that was in it. What I ended up with are two very real and applicable gems. 


The first was this quote:

"Suppose you went into an artist’s studio and saw a picture at which he had been working for months, yet unfinished; would you, not being an artist, take up his brush and begin to put touches here and there on the canvas? Each life of husband or wife, child, brother or sister, in your home is a picture which God is painting, and which is yet unfinished. Beware that you mar not His work! So let us be patient with one another at home. We all have our faults, we all make mistakes – but we can help each other more by loving patience, than by scathing criticism"

How often do we, as wives and mothers, grow impatient with our families short comings? I know I can't be the only one gets tired of reminding people of things. Like reminding my husband to pick up his socks, or reminding my daughter to flush the toilet. While these things are so small in the grand scheme of things, how we react to them is MAJOR. As scripture says "death and life are in the power of the tongue". {Proversb 18:21}


Our words carry so much weight and they can bring our families down or build them up. Just as we are told in Proverbs 14:1 "Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands."


Are the words you use daily building up your house? Are your words professing Godliness? I know this is something I struggle with and so I'm purposing to do better.  


The next quote that actually helps with the first, even though this isn't the order that the booklet followed.

"If we are feeling uncomfortable from any cause, we have no right, according to the law of love, to diffuse our irritations through the household. If we are in any unhappy mood, in which we cannot suppress the ill-humor, we have no right to vent it in the circle of our loved ones, and would far better go to our own room, or out into the fresh air, alone, somewhere, and stay until we have gotten back our sweet spirit again, so that we can scatter roses, not thorns, among our loved ones."

When I'm having a bad day my whole family feels it. But my hubby is good about trying to pick up the energy when I'm lagging. But on the days we're both not doing so great, it's rough. I end up feeling like I'm in an uphill battle. 


But there is hope we don't have to be weary and frustrated. We don't have to scatter thorns. The reason why we feel frustrated is because we try to live a Godly life in our flesh. But we can't. We will fail every time. The only way to truly live a Godly life is to die to self and allow Christ to live through us. "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." {Galatians 2:20} 


So when you're feeling wearied in well doing, think on Galatians 6:9 "And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." And go get alone with God. If you're in a season similar to mine that probably means you'll have to go into the bathroom, but hey God shows up where ever we are right?


Get alone with God and ask Him to fill you, to use you, to just take over it all! tell Him you can't do it, you know it's the truth, and so does He! So just tell Him and let Him work through you. Don't try to do it on your own. Lift your spirit by singing some hymns or psalms of praise and get your strength form the Creator of the universe! Then and only then can we build up our homes, and be sure that we are not speaking words of death, but rather words of life. With God's strength we can be sure to scatter roses. 


"My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." -Psalm 73:26


I'm linking up with The Time Warp Wife an Women Living Well